A cleansing and fragrant green tea! The fragrance is sharp, flowery and quite long lasting. The aftertaste is smooth and the tea leaves are mellow green before brewing, and turns yellowish green after steeping. I am not a dragonwell aficionado by any stretch, but the aroma and flavor of this tea is complex and the long-lasting aftertaste of this tea is just, wow.

Preparation

I got this tea and my colleagues were all super excited about trying it out. I mean, who wouldn’t want to get a taste of some Da Hong Pao, the tea of the imperial courts which cured an emperor?

With that expectation, this tea fell flat – don’t get me wrong, the tea was not bad. It just wasn’t great. The liquor was a bright reddish, and the taste was earthly and mellow. The aftertaste was not sweet and very mild.

Dark brown liquor with a tint of golden. The aroma is gently earthly, but the taste is smooth and sweet aftertaste. I have not drank much loose pu-erh yet, but I do find the taste to be more mellow than pu-erh in cake form. Overall, I enjoyed this tea, but I am left wanting a more robust flavor towards the later steepings.

This pu-erh has been sitting in my tea cupboard for a few weeks now as I am the resident tea brewer for my office cube, but it turns out most of my co-workers favor green and oolong tea; drinking tea is not quite the same without drinking buddies, but it’s Monday morning and I have been thinking all weekend about having an assertive savory tea to start the day. So there.

I am brewing this gongfu-style, with a new yixing pot for pu-erh (only used once before). Cleansed the tea leaves twice and brewed it subsequently for: 30s, 45s, 1m, 2m, 3m, 4m

Early steepings: Mellow earthly sweet taste with smokey woody scent. The color is a robust brown color. The flavor is complex as you might expect from a “sheng” or raw pu-erh: gentle taste at the first sip, transitioning to mild bitterness and then transforming to a smooth sweet taste that lingers.

Later steepings: The taste starts becoming smooth and brisk, with the same satisfying sweet aftertaste. The tingling mouthfeel is very very good.